


Set the fire to the third bar

by Trash



Category: Linkin Park
Genre: Angst, M/M, Wanderlust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 08:56:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1157683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chester can't sit still, but Brad isn't willing to move</p>
            </blockquote>





	Set the fire to the third bar

**Author's Note:**

> And miles from where you are,  
> I lay down on the cold ground  
> I, I pray that something picks me up  
> And sets me down in your warm arms

Chester can’t sit still, always feels like he’s missing something by staying in one place. Brad, he has no problems with being grounded, always liked having links to place and ties to people.

He says to Chester “What’s so bad about L.A?”

“I’m not free.” He replied. In retrospect, that was the moment he decided to leave.

***

Brad sits at the window of the apartment (His apartment. Used to be their apartment. “Coming back to our place?” he asked Mike after a night of heavy drinking and Mike sighed softly, wrapped a hand around Brad’s forearm, “He isn’t coming back. It’s your apartment now.”) and stares out across the street. He thinks of Chester a thousand miles away, riding a train without a ticket, hitch hiking from country to country until he finds his freedom.

It’s hard not to be sad, sometimes, and it’s even harder not to be angry. He breathes out on the window and, in the steam of his own breath, he draws a line from one corner of the pane to the other. Imagines it’s like a map, connecting the distance between him and Chester.

This is pathetic. And he needs another drink.

He swipes his hand across the steam, erasing the line. Erasing the pain. Trying to erase the memory.

***

Paris in winter. He can’t take this any more. He told Brad he needed to go, but he had expected Brad to follow. Now he was alone and it was all his fault.

Imagine a cold that buried itself in your skin and promised you’d never be quite warm enough ever again. Imagine not having a cent (Franc? Euro? Centime?) to your name. Imagine you were mugged back in Germany and they beat you up. They stole everything you owned and left you for dead but, back then, the warmth of Autumn lulled you into a false sense of security.

Now he lies down on a park bench and pulls his warn jacket tighter around himself. He thinks of Brad, home alone and not missing him at all. He wishes he was back in LA with his lover’s arms wrapped around him, holding him. Protecting him. Saving him.

He shivers and tries not to cry. He’s bone tired but he can’t sleep in fear of never waking up.

He thinks of Brad, and how this isn’t the ending he’d had in mind for this particular story.


End file.
